aide

Patel is a former Trump aide and spent three years working in the Department of Justice.

Trump “is going to hit the Department of Justice with a blowtorch — and that torch is Matt Gaetz,” former Trump aide Stephen K. Bannon said last week.

Nazarian, a former state Assembly member and former aide to Krekorian, said in a phone call Tuesday that he was “tired” but in “great spirits.”

Those moves “would turn much of the civil service into an army of suck-ups,” Robert Shea, a former aide to President George W. Bush, told me this year.

The chief of staff is considered to be the president's top aide, and plays a crucial role in every president's administration.